[size=13.3333px]“..I can't say enough about this software. I've been using it now religiously for the past 7 months with very positive results. This software is truly ahead of the curve and the more I use it, the more I appreciate it. ..Thanks again for introducing such a revolutionary concept into the market!”R. S., Toronto, Canada"I'm surprised how fast it is, I thought I have to run it overnight to get a strategy... I use an I7 2,8 GH and a run lasts only some minutes. ... Builder; exceeds all my expectations."W. S., Berg, Germany“Just wanted to let you know that I think the builder software is a very worthwhile, awesome tool. It is easy to use and it gives very nice equity curves. I have enjoyed using it very much.”R. W., Eugene, OR

How does it work?As an example, let's say you want a trading strategy for a small portfolio of stocks – it could just as well be futures, forex or other instruments – and that you want your strategy to have a profit factor greater than 2, no more than 20% drawdown, and a nice straight equity curve. You want winning trades to last, say, five days on average. To have Builder generate such a strategy, you would load the price data for the symbols of interest; enter your requirements for profit factor, drawdown, correlation coefficient, and average bars in wins (e.g., profit factor >= 2.0); then press the Build button. Builder will use an advanced genetic programming algorithm to evolve your strategy while you watch. When it's finished, you can review the performance results and strategy code and either accept it as is or modify one of the settings and build again.Builder has a variety of settings that allow you to customize the results, such as specifying the types of trading orders used for entry and exit, the set of indicators that can be considered for use in the strategies, and whether the strategies are long-only, short-only, or include both long and short trades. You can also specify the range of available values used for indicator inputs and order price calculations. Other options let you limit the number of entries per day and specify the entry and exit times for intraday strategies. You can also add a neural network as an entry condition, control the strategy complexity to limit the risk of over-fitting, and specify how much data is set aside for out-of-sample testing.

Trader Profile: Tomas Nesnidal, co-owner of Financnik.cz: "... you can test literally millions of ideas in a few hours... You open AB, set up some parameters and let AB do the work. It will build strategies, test it OOS and produce final codes. Especially with latest 64-Bit AB 1.2 the progress is very efficient. On my computer (i7-980x, 12GB RAM, SSD Intel 320) I can use up to 65,000 population on daily data... in 15 minutes." Read the full profile of Tomas and how he uses Builder.

[size=13.3333px]Why not build strategies yourself?
Developing an effective trading strategy the traditional way is not easy. Whether you do your own programming or hire someone else to implement your ideas, the development process is complicated and time consuming. Assuming you have a viable idea to start with, the first step is programming it and verifying that the code does what you want it to do. You then need to test it to see if it has potential. Unfortunately, most trading ideas simply don't work, which means more programming, more testing, and so on.

Many traders abandon the idea of developing their own strategy and opt to purchase one. While this can be effective, the drawbacks of this option include the fact that most trading systems are developed for a small number of markets and/or time frames (e.g., daily bars only). If you decide to trade a different market or time frame, you need to purchase another system. Also, markets can and do change over time, and even the best systems sometimes need re-optimization and/or modifications at some point in the future, which makes the initial investment in the system less cost-effective.

Adaptrade Builder was designed to address these problems. Builder automates the strategy development process. It outputs clean, complete code that includes rules and trading orders for entering the market, exiting at a profit, and exiting at a loss (e.g., money management stops). The strategy code is provided in open text file format for each supported platform.How do you know the strategies will be profitable?No one can guarantee that a trading strategy will be profitable. However, Builder is designed with features that give you the best possible chance of developing robust, profitable trading strategies. Builder incorporates several features that help guide the process to strategies that are likely to have good out-of-sample and real-time performance. In particular, you can separate the data on which the strategies are built ("training" data) from the data used for testing ("testing" and "validation" data).

Trader Interview: Petr Tmej, founder of AOStrading.net and QuantOn Solutions: "... Considering my live trading experience I started more than 3 years ago on January 2013. I started with my initial capital $19,625. That year I earned $16,220. After including all the fees for live market data, exchange fees etc. the net profit for 2013 was $14,090 – a return of 71.80%... " Read the full interview with Petr and learn how he uses Builder in his own trading and teaches others how to use it through his online and live courses.

[size=13.3333px]Also, you can build strategies that maximize or minimize any combination of 84 different performance metrics, including ones related to strategy quality and robustness, such as significance, correlation coefficient of the equity curve, Kelly f value, MAR ratio, Sortino ratio, profit factor, and system complexity. Moreover, the strategy logic produced by Builder incorporates volatility-normalized parameters, which help adapt the strategies to different market conditions. The user's guide includes a section that covers factors affecting out-of-sample performance and ways to maximize the out-of-sample and real-time trading results.

The latest version of Builder also includes special build tracking rules that monitor the build process and either restart or terminate when the results start to become over-fit. To minimize the chances of over-fitting, you can incorporate stress testing options that make the strategies less sensitive to variations in the input parameter values and market prices. After the strategies are built, a unique test of statistical significance can be run to verify that the strategy's positive performance is not simply a result of good luck.

Your purchase of Builder includes:
- Lifetime per-user license for the program.
- Free upgrades for one year from the date of purchase.
- Three example files to demonstrate different settings that might be used in Builder and the kind of strategy code that may result.
- Six new bonus strategies. These strategies, developed using Builder version 2, include strategies for 3 min bars and daily bars of the E-mini S&P 500, 60 min bars of the mini Russell 2000 futures, daily bars of Amazon, 15 min bars of Google, and 60 min bars of EURUSD. In addition, seven bonus strategies developed using Builder version 1 are also included. These bonus strategies are only available to licensed users of the program.
- A 30 day money back guarantee.The software is designed for both individual and professional traders. The familiar Windows interface makes the program easy to use, and detailed help files are available if needed to explain how to use the program. To get started, all you need is TradeStation,MultiCharts, NinjaTrader, MetaTrader 4, or AmiBroker. If you trade only on end-of-day data and can place trading orders manually through your broker, then you can use Builder as a stand-alone trading platform without the need for one of the supported platforms.

Still have questions? Read the online FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions).

Available Download Versions

Version 2.4.1 (Trial download)Posted: February 2, 2018

Version 2.4.1 is primarily a bug-fix release. In addition, the main list displays (View Data, Trade List, Data File Format) and the price charts have been modified to improve responsiveness with large data sets. Several other usability improvements were made as well. Please refer to the Release Notes page for more information.

Note: This download is for the trial version. The trial version and the regular, licensed version are identical except that the trial only runs for 14 days and cannot be activated to convert it to the licensed version. After purchase, the licensed version will be available through the license portal online through your account at Softwarekey.com; current licensees should visit the customer license page and click the Download button to obtain this release. The licensed version is activated using the license ID and activation password from your purchase receipt (also available on your license page). See Ordering Information for more information on installing and activating the licensed version.

Download Instructions. For best results, click the download link and save the installation file (below) to your computer's hard drive. Make a note of the location where the file is saved on your computer. After the download is complete, locate the .exe file and double-click it to start the installation. Follow the prompts to complete the installation. After installation, the Builder program icon should appear on your desktop and in the programs list in your start menu.

By default, the software is installed in the folder Program Files\Adaptrade Software\Adaptrade Builder 2.4.1. Three example files are provided in the Examples folder (Program Files\Adaptrade Software\Adaptrade Builder 2.4.1\Examples). Bonus strategies are provided with the purchase of the licensed version. Version 2.4.1 may be installed concurrently with all prior versions without uninstalling the older versions first.

Note: The installation also includes files that must be installed separately into the trading platform. For each supported language, there is a corresponding folder in the installation directory containing files that must be copied or installed separately. These folders are EasyLanguage (for TradeStation and MultiCharts), NinjaScript (for NinjaTrader), MT4 (for MetaTrader 4), and AFL (for AmiBroker). Please refer to the installation section of the user's guide for instructions on how to copy or install these files to the proper locations. Failure to install these files will result in errors when running strategies created by Builder. The file for NinjaTrader was modified for version 2.3.0 and must be installed (or re-installed if installed previously) in order for NinjaTrader strategies generated by Builder 2.3.0 and later to work properly. No changes were made to any of the trading platform files for version 2.4.1, so if you've already installed the new NinjaTrader code for version 2.3.0, there's no need to re-install it for this version.

After opening the program, the help files can be accessed by pressing F1. The Getting Started chapter includes a "Quick Start Steps" section that provides an overview of the steps required to start using the program.

Note: This version of Builder is available only for 64-bit versions of Windows, which allows the program to take advantage of all available installed memory to process larger data files. If you're not sure which version of Windows you have, you can check the System settings under the Control Panel. This version should run on all recent releases of Windows from Windows 7 to the present. Since Builder is very computationally intensive, older hardware and older versions of Windows, such as XP, are not recommended.